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Topic: Spines (Read 52486 times)

I had a dilemma when shelving all my old french-language books when I finished uni - their spine text runs the other way so you have to tilt your head left instead of right to read along a shelf of 'em. If they're mixed with English books, it's just anarchy. You could shelve them upside down and they'd look the same, but deep down you'd always KNOW they were upside down, and that would clearly be unacceptable.

It's even more tricky than that, because if all the US or UK trade text spine are always oriented in the same way (bending your head to the right), in France, depending on the editor, it's either one way or another. So when you're looking for a particular item on the shelf, it's kind of a strange gymnastics (better do it when there is nobody around).

It was explained to me once that French book spines are designed to be read when on shelves and UK ones when a book is lying flat on a surface.

?think I argument Emperor's explaining to way some goes Which

(Sorry for making that gag a second time.)

Indeed. In a vertical stack 1 goes at the top so you read down, then you put that stack on its side and 1 is now on the right - to read them you cock your head to right and essentially read downwards right to left.

Logged

if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

I'm just off to cut the very last three shelves for my all-new revised house-wide bookshelf reorganisation project (necessitated because at the age of 2-going-on-22 I think it's about time that my poor neglected daughter didn't have to sleep in a room stacked floor-to-ceiling with GNs, SF and straight novels, Archaeology, History and Science books, Star Wars crapiana, and so what hasn't been sold yet has to go somewhere).

Is it wrong that I'm whistling a jaunty tune to myself as I contemplate a complete re-ordering of my remaining (and thus most precious) books? Must review this entire thread to develop a scheme, but first, Nurse! The tenon saw!

Yes, yeesssss! A few weeks behind schedule, but a total of 22m of shelving is now complete, spread across three rooms, our books for the exclusive and sole use of. Not including new cupboarded space set aside for CDs, DVDs, files etc., my former office library (in storage in my brother's house, along with some flatpack shelves set against the day I have an office again), and three smaller bookcases reserved for the kids. Lion's share is gloriously accessible in the living room, cobbled together rather nattily into a built-in unit from re-used and re-sized IKEA Billys and scrap timber. An end to boxes and attics and teetering piles, except for all that stuff that won't fit, which is heading for a car-boot sale, and then (lets face it) the charity shops. We've already eBayed anything that seemed vaguely valuable. If the leftovers include any comicky or genre stuff, I'll put up a free-to-a-good-home list here first.

Let the rigid ordering of spines commence! Well, right after I get a system down, get some jobs done for my father-in-law, and prepare the vegetable patch while this dry weather holds. So soon. Honest.